January 25, 2006

During my pre-service training, one of the hardest and seemingly most necessary things I wanted to communicate to my host family was that I missed home. I missed my friends. I missed pizza and beer as dark as the nights in my new, lightless neighborhood. But the best that I could do after two months of Peace Corps’ astounding language training was tell them, Ma yad garchhu (I remember).

And what do I remember now? Had I changed after two years in that most wonderful and flawed organization? Am I better? Did I climb Mt. Everest? Did I build a bridge with cave-dwelling, sun-fearing villagers? Wasn’t I supposed to be sick all the time? And what about the States? Wasn’t I supposed to realize that, at heart, I too had become a cave-dwelling, sun-fearing villager and could never live like I had before?

I spent my last couple months as a Peace Corps volunteer wondering exactly how correct the Peace Corps’ shrinks would be at forecasting hard times. They told me I’d be sick, which I really hadn’t. I mean, not any more than I would have been if I’d stayed in the States, or if I’d moved to Canada. Yes, I did have diarrhea, but it wasn’t like I’d never experienced that before the Peace Corps. I didn’t need Nepal to get indigestion. As much talk as there was about this, I never got ill enough to really complain about it. Except that one time during the monsoon when it was well over 110°F and the power went out for a couple days.

Which was awful.

§

I’m still having a hard time looking back at my Peace Corps experience and the very, very strange culture that surrounds it. For me, it was completely unlike anything that I had preconceived. In a country of mud huts with thatch roofs, I never lived in one. In a country of sprawling rice fields, I never spent much time around them. In a country of poverty, I never really experienced it.

Sure I saw it. I passed chilly corpses dead from the night’s freeze. I watched one morning as tractors demolished the shanties I used to pass on my way. I fingered bullet holes in the waiting room of the airport. I heard bombs. I saw the flashes from rifle muzzles in the distance before going to bed. I taught shoeless children and paid half-naked rickshaw drivers. I was mugged and robbed.

But I never really experienced the things that gave the city where I lived, Birganj, its edge. I was always safe, far from the things that really change people. Even when I rode in the backseat of an army captain’s car, his Browning 9mm shoved down the front of his pants, and explaining how not a month ago the Maoists had attack him at this very spot and killed several of his men, even then I was safe.

And I can’t explain why that was.

§

I was in Dharan, in the hills and far from the flat, dusty life in my city. I was finishing the training that the Maoist-affiliated student union said I couldn’t finish, because they were trying to keep Eastern Nepal closed for some reason, to prove some point, to someone, somewhere. I was in Dharan and I’m thinking about where I’m going to be, what I’m going to do, after Peace Corps.

I was thinking about April, when I would be finishing my service. I was thinking about what it’s going to be like the day after I finish, when I’m done and I go to sleep, and when I'd wake up, I’d still be in Nepal but no longer affiliated with the government. I was thinking about two years ahead. All I was seeing was “Future looks hazy. Check back later.”

The one thing that I wanted to do, though, was to have one last breathe of what I loved about Nepal, outside of what I can get in Birganj. I want to see Birtamode, another flat, dusty city, and remember all the crazy people that flocked to Andrew, a PCV who lived there. I wanted to walk the quiet, almost urban and slowly dying streets of Rajbiraj and remember the street dogs and the Christmases I spent there. During an early morning, I wanted to ride a bus along the quieter parts of the East-West Highway, remembering that not all the trees have been cut. I want to jump off the bus as it pulls into a buspark with rickshaws swarming about, remembering that in such a place, I can be happy.

I remember the first walk through the Birganj bazaar after arriving at post, not sure if I was in an Indiana Jones or a Mad Max movie, but knowing I was going to be OK. I remember my first night in Birganj, staying in such a bad hotel that I even surprised myself. I remember being woken numerous times in a shady hotel in Thailand by roaches crawling over my body. And that had been a vacation.

I need to go to Jhappa and see the green, lowland tea fields one more time. I need to stay a night in Rajbiraj one last time, because I didn’t know that my last visit there was going to be my last visit there. I need one more cold coke on a hot, sticky day. I want more foggy mornings spent over coffee and newspapers. I have to see more smiling faces of eager students—and teachers. I have to experience everything again, so I can remember.

And yet there was no time.

§

And everything ended with a whimper. I said my farewells to the teachers and administrators at the District Education Office. I have to be honest: they were too thankful. Every month for the last year I was in Nepal, the calendar was filled with blacked-out days due to strikes called by both the Maoists and the political parties. Schools were a top target. I knew the system I had worked to assist was doomed. Still, everyone smiled and wished me luck in the future.

I went to Kathmandu and started the paperwork that would end my Peace Corps service. Then I realized why my whole experience had such a weird feeling to it: the people. Two years it'd taken me to figure out that I living in very strange social and professional circumstances. I had walked into my office and proclaimed with great pride that I was a Peace Corps volunteer, and had immediately gone to work. I had met a couple dozen people one day, and within a week had been holding some girl's hair as she vomited into a toilet, and then laughing as the story was recounted to entire groups of people.

This was not normal. It was, however, one of the best parts of this experience.

I had met my wife in the Peace Corps. She was making a documentary for USAID on development programs in Nepal. A focus of this documentary had been about the Peace Corps. She had been collecting still photographs to use in the footage and was confronted by something she thought was strange. The photos were either of volunteers working in schools, helping farmers, holding trainings, etc., or the photos were of volunteers having parties, guzzling booze, posing in Nepali drag, etc.

I had a hard time sorting all this out to her.

Perhaps I wasn't the best volunteer. I still have strong ties to the country, yes, and I did accomplish some nice things while I was there. But there are just too many memories to sort through, and making a nicely packaged anecdote about my experience has been next to impossible. It was positive. It was wonderful. And I wouldn't have been as successful if I hadn't done it. But what it's like to be a Peace Corps volunteer? I don't have a great answer to that, and I really wish I did.

Because I remember it a lot.

Scott Allan Wallick was a Peace Corps volunteer in Nepal from February 2002 until April 2004. He worked as a teacher trainer for the District Education in Birganj, Parsa District. He blogged extensively about his Peace Corps experience (visit the blog) until Peace Corps / Washington asked him to close it for safety and security reasons, which he did. The Peace Corps program in Nepal closed in in September 2004, and Scott's group, N/194, became the last to COS in country. Currently Scott lives in New York with is wife, Binita, and is an editor for the English Language Teaching division of Oxford University Press.

October 28, 2005

Here in Tulsipur, Dang District, southwestern Nepal (1997), it is early spring, the dry season, and dust swirls up along the unpaved paths and roads. I walk toward work at Krisi Bikaas Karelya (the local agricultural extension office, His Majesty’s Government of Nepal) and thence to visit some farmers, helping them learn ways to grow more and better vegetables, extend their growing season and improve their soils. Twice a week I first walk to Shree Rapti Vidya Mandir, a temple of learning, a private school. The headmaster’s noticed some Peace Corps Volunteers in town and asked that one of us come teach the sixth and seventh graders’ classes in English conversation. I say I’ll give it a try.

The classroom is long and deep, crowded with 35 to 40 students per class. They all wear uniforms, the girls in dark blue jackets and skirts, powder-blue shirts and hair bows. By strong custom, they separate themselves by gender, into a boys’ side and a girls’ side of the room – and I smile inside, to see so many girls coming to school. Some students are shy, reticent; a few are eager, forthcoming.

They’ve already studied grammar and vocabulary – what they need from me is pronunciation, syntax, rhythm, the sound of American English – and a chance to do some creative thinking. I show them pictures of animals on a wildlife calendar, along with a world map – and they learn new words, new animals, some geography, the concepts of "endangered species" and "habitat." Now they are growing wide-eyed and excited.

We pick some theme topics and divide into discussion groups, all in English. We talk about careers and life plans. Some girls want to be teachers or doctors, already have a certain college they hope to attend. Each student tells a little about that family, their daily schedule of study, play, and helping out at home. It is soon clear to everyone (without my needing to voice it) that the boys have lots more free time for study and for play, as each girl has her duties of housework, cooking, herding goats or cattle, helping care for younger children.

Some days, to get more space for the discussion circles, we go outdoors, they sit in circles on the brown grass – still dividing themselves into girls here, boys there. Toward the end of each class (more than one hour), each group sends its selected speaker to report to the whole class what their group decided about the theme topic – my subterfuge, of course, to give them practice in public speaking in English. One day, after they are confident and all participating, I give this theme: "What are the three most serious problems facing Nepali women, and what should be done about them?"

They are so engrossed and earnest – more diligent than members of Nepal's Parliament setting out to debate this issue. That is when I take pictures – and now one photo in full living color, three circles of Nepali schoolgirls, sitting on the grass, has been spread throughout the U.S.A., in the 1999 calendar created, published and sold by Peace Corps Volunteers/Nepal, raising money for a scholarship fund for Nepali girls. What did they decide that day Nepali women need? Educational opportunities, employment opportunities, and equality of treatment with men.

The boys’ circles, too, have their answers, and they are very similar. But the girls press them for the real answers: "OK, you say equality is part of the solution, but what will you (yes, I mean you personally) say and do when your wife wants to work at a career, or when your own daughter wants to go to college instead of marry early?" Such a lively, revealing debate – soon everyone dissolves in laughter! Next class, we take the same topic, but about Nepali men. Fair’s fair.

I take the headmaster aside and tell him of the scholarship fund for girls – could we identify some outstanding student whose family can barely afford to keep her in school – costs of tuition, uniforms, supplies, even for taking required exams there is a fee. Oh, yes, he tells me -- there are two of them -- especially a Tharu girl: Pushpa Chaudhary -- she is so bright and works so hard. Her family has a small subsistence farm, but they have three kids in school and can barely pay to keep them there. The father works in the district center to earn the cash to do it, can only come home one day a week. The mother has a chronic illness, leaving all the housework to the girls. They must walk an hour and a half, each way, to get to school; there is no public bus at the right time, and no money for bicycles.

I must interview the parents. For Tanka Kumari Basnet, I visit her mother – that’s easy; she lives in town. But the Tharu girl (Pushpa) lives far away. Though I could walk there and back, how will I find the way? The headmaster offers help – he takes me there riding behind him on his motorbike one Saturday, Nepalis’ weekly holiday, and he’s made sure the father will be home. Perhaps in deference to my age (past 60), he takes it slowly over the roughest parts of the road, then we go off along the dusty paths winding between old rice stubble. It’s a treat; I’m no longer used to riding, except a ramshackle public bus overstuffed with people, and cargo -- sometimes a live goat or two.

Pushpa’s father leads us into the house – dark, but not as small as some – to sit cross-legged on mats on the floor. We three are alone there, and he makes spiced milk-tea (chia) for us – the constant mark of welcome in a Nepali home. He’s eager for his daughters to succeed, to stay in private school and get good grades, wants whatever small help the scholarship for Pushpa could give. I tell him we’ll apply for it and wait to see what happens.

These Tharus are the ancient indigenous people of the Terai, immune to the mosquito’s malaria, and thus free of the yoke of invaders. But then Western chemicals came, subduing the mosquitoes, and southerners arrived to stay – scam artists who could read and write while the Tharus could not. The Tharus were bilked into signing writings they could not read, became indebted, lost their lands, became bonded laborers, kamaiyas – their debt grew and passed from one generation to the next. Some children of 8 or 10 leave their family to go work and live, under a yearly contract, serving a high-caste family – no school for them! Pushpa knows how lucky she is.

Both Tanka Kumari and Pushpa got their scholarships – renewable if they continue to do well – and I gave Pushpa my used bicycle to cut down on her three hours of commuting every day.

Someone asked me later if I felt I was doing any good. I said, multiply me by 125 (for all the Peace Corps Volunteers in Nepal) and then add hundreds of other aid workers (from Denmark, Japan, Canada …) all working here. With the immensity of need, if it were just myself alone, you should imagine the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean and a single drop of rainwater falling onto its surface – that little splash is me. But it’s "raining" everywhere.